In March 2022, Destiny 2 YouTubers and Bungie themselves got hit by a series of DMCA takedowns from someone that was unknown at the time. However, after a thorough investigation, Bungie has now identified and filed a lawsuit against the individual who sent these fake takedown notices on YouTube.
Yesterday, Bungie filed a lawsuit against an individual named Nicholas Minor also known as “Lord Nazo”. Minor ran a YouTube channel that was hit by a series of takedowns from Bungie’s brand protection vendor, CSC Global, for uploading Destiny’s original soundtracks in December 2021, which were taken down by YouTube in January this year.
According to the lawsuit, Minor created two new Gmail accounts with the same CSC name in retaliation against Bungie and issued a total of ninety-six DCMA takedown notices against Destiny YouTubers, which included My Name Is Byf, Aztecross, Promethean, and many more.
“Ninety-six times, Minor sent DMCA takedown notices purportedly on behalf of Bungie, identifying himself as Bungie’s “Brand Protection” vendor in order to have YouTube instruct innocent creators to delete their Destiny 2 videos or face copyright strikes.”
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“Over that weekend, Minor’s ‘Damian Reynolds’ account began sending
threatening emails to CSC, with the subject line ‘You’re in for it now’ and telling CSC ‘Better start running. The clock is ticking.'”
Bungie Sues Destiny 2 DMCA Sender for $7.6m
For this, Bungie is “entitled to damages and injunctive relief, including enhanced statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the works implicated in the Fraudulent Takedown Notice that willfully infringed Bungie’s registered copyrights, totaling $7,650,000“.
Bungie worked with Google to identify that individual by tracing their IP address and the two Gmail accounts, under the names “Jeremy Wiland” and “Damian Reynolds”.
The data Google sent over to Bungie earlier this month included “every takedown notice Minor sent from each of those accounts” and “a log of each IP address used by Minor in connection with the two accounts”.
Related: Bungie Comments On Possibility Of Future Live Events In Destiny 2
After the takedown notices were reported to Bungie, the company released an official statement that they are actively investigating the issue and “these actions are not being taken at the request of Bungie or our partners”.
The company also filed another lawsuit against a Destiny 2 cheat maker Elite Boss Tech who agreed to pay a total of $13.5 million.
Destiny 2’s Season of the Haunted is live right now with the yearly Solstice event starting in July 2022.
